good opportunity for Americans now especially to understand the different tiers of foreign operatives within any given country:

1. an agent (James Bond is the canonical example)

2. an asset

3. a useful idiot

The trick is that sometimes its harder to tell which flavor a particular individual best fits, at least from the outside with insufficient data. Some we might assume are agents/assets might be merely useful idiots, or vice versa.

Assets are more often than not not aware that they are assets.